The Grundig Vision 9 47-9980 T USB TV is a Full HD 47-inch LCD TV with a built-in sound bar. Pricing and availability are not known for the UK market; the TV lists at 2,500 Euros (2,200 GBP) in Germany.

Reviewed by Florian Friedrich on February 24, 2010

Decent colours.
Easy, intuitive operation.
Excellent motion clarity.
Great sound.
Chic design.

24p picture shows 3:2 pulldown judder.
Weak contrast in the home-cinema environment.
Inaccurate HDMI-576i/p processing.

The low contrast and 24p judder will turn home-cinema purists away. For everyday TV viewing, however, the Grundig is easy to operate and produces both decent motion clarity and natural colours. And here’s something we can say about very few TVs: The speakers sound great.

Most Important Connections:

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Multimedia

The integrated media player will play back music, videos, and photos, although its photo reproduction falls short of optimal. A USB storage add-on is expected during 2010.

Other Features

The Grundig’s connections panel seems a bit cramped. One unusual feature is the fine-tunable subwoofer connection, whose cut-off frequency can be varied between 80 and 400 hertz.

The built-in tuner receives analogue cable as well as digital terrestrial (DVB-T) signals, and can power active DVB-T antennas. Grundig plans to release a model with an integrated satellite tuner within 2010. The reviewed model’s power consumption fails to impress: At half brightness, it drew 190 watts — not exactly breathtaking, but still lower than with plasma TVs.

Sound Quality

3D sound: The Grundig’s “sound projector” hangs below the screen.

Our review obviously has to devote some time to the built-in sound bar — which makes the Grundig stand out proudly from the competition. Instead of pancake-flat mini speakers, the Grundig uses a speaker bar mounted beneath the screen; this sound bar, or “3D Sound Projector” as Grundig calls it, contains eight full-range and eight treble units behind a robust perforated sheet. Two further bass-reflex speakers point backwards out of the TV’s casing. Grundig’s efforts have paid off: The sound is not only loud; it also offers excellent spatial differentiation.

The individual units can be driven separately, allowing the sound bar to point sound in specific directions. Acoustic experts refer to this as wave field synthesis. By taking advantage of reflections from nearby walls, the device produces astounding surround effects. The crucial advantage: Whereas classical “virtual surround” systems with stereo speakers only managed to produce this effect in the so-called sweet spot, this sound bar produces the effects for significantly more listeners sitting in different locations.

The Grundig comes with a measurement microphone.

Adjusting the system for your listening environment is simple, thanks to the supplied measurement microphone. It’s essential that you make use of this: Convincing surround effects are only possible after a quick calibration to suit the room. Be careful not to sit the TV too close to a side wall; otherwise, the surround sound cannot unfold correctly. The room should also be sparingly furnished so that it reflects the sound well. Thanks to a decoder for Dolby Digital and DTS, the sound bar can interpret true 5.1-channel surround signals, which can come via the digital audio input from a Blu-ray player or a set-top box.

To summarise, the sound bar produces voluminous sound with excellent spatial differentiation. Music sounds neutral on first listen, but ultimately comes across as a bit too aggressive. For music lovers, therefore, this is no alternative to a fully fledged speaker system.

Operation

Here again, the Vision 9 47-9980 T USB scores plenty of plus points: The slim remote control sits excellently in the hand, and its ‘question mark’ button calls up on-screen explanations of all the TV’s functions. The menu’s design is basic, but the interface reacts quickly. There’s a back button, and the channel lists show logical presorting — both features improve the TV’s ease of use. We only dislike the automatic format switching, which stretches 4:3-format programmes across the whole screen.

Picture Quality of Standard-Definition Signals

The “Soft” preset offers the best starting point for a good TV picture, but it requires you to turn down the sharpness slightly and to switch off the noise filter (see Ideal Settings, below). You can then call up these adjustments in future via the “Custom” preset. The analogue tuner’s picture looks honest, although not especially detailed; the digital tuner’s picture looks decent, if you’re willing to forgive the excessive picture-cropping (overscan).

We’re particularly impressed with the Grundig’s viewing angle: Unusually for an LCD TV, which would normally show pronounced viewing-angle dependence, the Grundig’s picture remains decent when viewed side-on, since neither the gamma nor the colours change to a bothersome extent. The high brightness of the screen means the picture is clear even in daylight, although the display’s antireflective coating could be more effective.

The motion clarity is good, but depends strongly on the chosen level of the MEMC technology — three levels are on offer. The technology smoothes out film judder and makes fast camera pans display more sharply. If, therefore, you want to see authentic cinema-style judder in films, you should deactivate MEMC and turn down the backlight as low as possible; otherwise, the picture will blur. With TV programmes and documentaries, on the other hand, MEMC’s middle setting produces the best results.

Unfortunately, the Grundig fails to tease the full details out of Scart-RGB and HDMI-576i/p signals, meaning the pictures via these inputs often look too soft. The de-interlacing in films lacks accuracy: In one of our favourite test scenes in “Six Days Seven Nights” (a panning shot across a beach), for example, we noticed some irritating flicker. We first derived maximum detail clarity in a PAL picture when we set the playback device to up-scale it to 1080i/p — you should therefore pair the Grundig with a DVD player and HDMI set-top box that have the corresponding capability.

Picture Quality of High-Definition Signals

Almost perfect colours — but the darkest greyscales look a bit too bluish.

First of all, we take a look at the black-and-white classic “Casablanca”. The Grundig displays an attractive and only slightly too warm picture. In colour films such as “Casino Royale”, there’s barely any cause for complaint: In the fourth chapter of the James Bond adventure, skin tones and the ocean look not only vivid, but also natural. The detail and sharpness also impress.

In the computer animated opening sequence to the Bond film, however, weaknesses appear in the 24p reproduction: The symbols show irregular judder as they fly across the screen — just like in 60-hertz signals with 3:2 pulldown. You can eliminate this problem by activating the MEMC technology in its “Low” setting.

Another problem appeared with playback of high-definition signals: The low in-picture contrast is particularly obvious in dark scenes. The poorly lit street, for example, in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (chapter 2), looks far too flat, and the bluish residual illumination limits the picture’s depth and plasticity. Our tip: Only darken the living room slightly and activate “Dynamic Contrast”, which brightens dark details to make the picture seem to have more contrast and better differentiation.

Our settings in the Grundig’s picture menu optimise the detail and subjective contrast, and are based on the “Soft” preset.

Picture Mode: Custom

Brightness: 51

Contrast: 67

Sharpness: 30

Colour: 48

Noise Reduction: Off

Colour Temp.: Warm

Vibrant Colour: Off

Perfect Clear: Off

Dynamic Contrast: On

Dynamic Backlight: On

MPEG Artefact Reduction: Off

MEMC: Off

These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations might necessitate slight adjustment.